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ruptcy throw them off for ever?* This is the proper basis of comparison with us, as bearing upon the question of our relative civilization. Who would trust in a favorable result from such a vote? On the other hand, if, when our national debt was at its maximum, or at any other time, such a question had been submitted to the universal suffrage of this whole Union, who can doubt there would have been an overwhelming majority in favor of full and punctual payment? There is abundant evidence that, at this moment, taking the country as a whole, the sentiments of the mass of our people on this subject are sound, and their action, in any possible event, would be honest and just; and not only so, but even the delinquent States, we doubt not, will ere long come to their senses and retrieve their characters-as, indeed, the greater part of them have already done. Now, where is the country on the face of the globe, the mass of whose population are so cultivated and virtuous, that, being placed under similar circumstances, and divided into small, independent portions like our States, such a question could be submitted to them with consequences less disastrous than those which are deplored in this country? If it be said that, though the general character of our people may be defended, still the fact of" repudiation" remains, and it is impossible to argue it away that the fault of it must lie somewhere-if not on our people, then on our institutions-we answer, that we do consider it a defect in our political system, that the individual States should be allowed to contract debts without control and without responsibility. And, as we believe that the constitution, properly in-. terpreted, prohibits it, so we could wish that instrument had been more explicit in its prohibitions; yet we are by no means willing to give up the right of selfgovernment in order to avoid or remedy such evils as have resulted from this accidental defect in our institutions. Those evils will eventually remedy themselves, and be productive of permanent good. It

is highly desirable that the tendency of the States to the contraction of debt should, in some way, be checked. We doubt not they will ultimately pay their present debts, learn a lesson of economy from experience, and if their credit abroad should suffer, it will be an additional security against rash expenditure in future.

The English also taunt us with the existence of negro slavery in a portion of our country, as an evidence of our backwardness in civilization. We will not reply with Mr. McDuffie's paradox: that the slavery of one portion of the community is essential to the freedom and civilization of the rest. It is indeed true, that the most perfect forms of ancient civilization existed in connection with a bloated system of slavery; yet, if the writer of this might be allowed to speak for himself personally, he would say that he has far more sympathy even with the professed abolitionists, than with their professed opponents. But what has the Briton done, that he should constitute himself the censor of all the world? After having grown rich by conquest and extortion, by slavery and the slave-trade, he has indeed compelled his brethren in the colonies to emancipate their negroes, and given them money to pay their debts to himself.

That was Briton-like. But what has he done at home? Are there really no slaves there, as Cowper sung? According to recent developments, there has been for many years more hard bondage, more grinding servitude, more excruciating misery, in the southern half of the Island of Great Britain-to say nothing of poor, plundered Ireland-than there ever was (we were about to say in the whole West Indies, certainly we may say) in the whole United States, at any period in the history of Negro Slavery. Let the oligarchy that govern England take care of the millions that are toiling and gnashing their teeth, and pining away around them.t

The number of the Edinburgh Review to which we have already referred, con

Mr. Lyell-whose book on America, by the way, forms an honorable exception to the general tone of British travelers in this country-admits and maintains that it would be certain ruin to submit the question of paying the English debt to the decision of universal suffrage; and even deprecatingly urges this fact, presumed to be undeniable, as a decisive answer to those friends of liberty who inquire why the right of suffrage should not be extended in Great Britain as it is in this country. Such a fact speaks volumes.

†They have begun to come up to the work in their fashion. After having so ordered their legislation for centuries as to protect the rich and exhaust the poor, they have at length begun to provide for the latter when it has become no longer safe to neglect them. The English

reconcile a high degree of refinement and culture when attained, with permanence on the one hand and general diffusion on the other. Hitherto, when nations have reached a certain point of social progress, there has always been a tendency to general corruption and dissolution. The progress has been partial and one-sided, pampering here, stinting there. Its very elements have contained in them the germs of decay. Italy and Spain admonish us, that even the Christian civilization of Europe promises to be no exception to the sad rule. We are to try the experiment under new auspices. And, though we have little occasion for pride and vanity, we have many reasons for gladness and thanksgiving. Indeed, what ground has any nation for boasting? To all the apostolic rebuke is applicable, "What hast thou which thou didst not receive?" In giving us extraordinary advantages, Divine Providence has laid us under extraordinary responsibilities. These are what we should learn to feel. We not only have duties to ourselves and our posterity to discharge, but we are entrusted with a mission for the whole race; its destinies, to a fearful extent, are placed in our hands. A lofty ideal a glorious goal is set before us. Let us not be high-minded, but run with modesty and circumspection, as well as with vigor and alacrity, lest we fail as others less favored have failed before us.

Some of our advantages are general freedom and freshness, an open field, a youthful spirit and susceptible character; courage, confidence and hope; a general diffusion of knowledge and culture, and of the means of external comfort; a heroic age in our early settlement and happy revolution; above all, in erecting our fabric of society, we have no antiquated edifices to remodel, no crumbling walls to prop up, no rubbish to remove; but an abundance of new and sound materials all around us.

Dr. Arnold, writing of English conservatism, and of the obstacles to improvement in the existing corrupt and unnatural state of English society, says, that "a volume might be written on those words of Harrington, we are living in the dregs of the Gothic Empire. It is that the beginnings of things are bad, and

when they have not been altered, you may safely say they want altering. But then comes the question whether our fate is not fixed, and whether you could not as well make the muscles and sinews of a full grown man perform the feats of an Indian juggler." It is sometimes represented, by various arguments and figures of speech, that those antiquated institutions which have come down from a semi-barbarous age, are useful, and even needful to sustain the new and better institutions in their feeble beginnings and during their slow and gradual growth. This might be true, if they contained in them the germs, or even the recognition, of a higher development; if they left free scope to the spirit of progress. such is far from being the case. They are notoriously the greatest obstacles and the most inveterate enemies of all change for the better. Where was it ever known that they encouraged such a change? Has not the spirit of conservatism which possesses them always and everywhere made an uncompromising warfare against every innovation and improvement? a spirit which, like the venomous reptile, still makes them its abode after they have crumbled to ruins that fill the air with pestilence and death.

But

All the natural elements of society and of humanity, evil as well as good, are among us in a state of commixture, commotion and contest. This is, indeed, a critical situation; but herein lies no occasion for dismay or discouragement. Great risk is often the condition of great success. Nature loves variety, and hates monotony. As Guizot has well said: this is the picture of the universe, of humanity itself. Yet nature does not amuse herself with placing in mere juxtaposition, or patching together the members and relics of the part after the life has departed from them-as the Europeans, and especially the English, have attempted, and are attempting, to do. But she developes her variety, calls forth the struggle, from the living elements of the present, as among us. Our civilization is, in this respect, more consonant with the course of nature than even the European, which, it must be admitted, exhibits a variety of form and movement unknown in ancient times.

BEETHOVEN.

BY RICHARD GRANT WHITE.

A GENIUS is expected by many, perhaps most of the world, to look and act very differently from the rest of mankind. Indeed, unless a man of great talent be remarkably large or small, or have such a physiognomy as was never before seen or heard of, or behave in such a manner as would make his company intolerable, unless he were that much talked of but rarely recognized thing-a genius-his hope of appreciation by the mass, in his own day and generation, would be, in most cases, vain. The eccentricities of genius, as they are called, are so looked upon as a necessary attendant, if not an essential part of it, as to be considered an unfailing index of its existence. So, but with more reason, miners tell the presence of rich iron beds by the discoloration and fetid odor of the water springing from the soil.

That some men of genius have been peculiar in person and eccentric in manner, there is no doubt; but there is as little doubt that their peculiarities and eccentricities have been greatly exaggerated by their Boswells, and again as little, that of men of genius, there have been comparatively few, very few, distinguished for eccentricity or personal peculiarity. Personal beauty of a high order is the only external characteristic which appears to belong to them as a class. The general belief on the subject seems naturally accounted for by the fact, that the peculiar habits of men of mark are as apt "monstrari digito" as their persons, and that which would be unheeded or frowned down in others, is sought out and tolerated, if not admired, in them. Most men paint for themselves an ideal head of the great creative minds with whose works they are familiar, and, doing so in conformity with the notions of which we have just spoken, most are disappointed on meeting with the portraits of those whom they have thus depicted to themselves.

There has probably never lived a more marked exception to these observationsone who, in his mode, life and personal appearance, more completely satisfied the general requirements as to men of genius-than Ludwig von Beethoven, the deaf composer of Bonn. Short in stature;

wild and melancholy in appearance; strange and careless in dress; painfully awkward in his movements; eccentric in all his habits of life; at times childishly simple, at others absurdly assuming in manner; distrustful of kindness, but intolerant of neglect; himself revering nothing, yet claiming all deference to himself; believing the enemies whom he despised, when they maligned the friends whom he respected; living in want and pleading penury when possessed of the means of comfort; affecting and seeming at times to despise rank and wealth, and yet eagerly seeking the notice of the one, and possession of the other; it seems only necessary that he should be a musician, and deaf, to fill up the measure of strangeness and inconsistency in his character. No one, who has understood and properly felt his music, can be for a moment dissatisfied with his por trait. The massy forehead and ponderous brow, the flood of wild, disheveled hair, the gloomy eye, gazing intensely into vacancy, and the strongly marked mouth, where determination and scorn, wit and melancholy, seem striving for the mastery, are fair exponents of the man and his works.

Schindler, his incompetent biographer, says of him, that he possessed too much genuine religious feeling to believe that Nature had created him to be a model for future ages, as many would have persuaded him; speaks of him as living in another world, though existing in this; compares him to a child, to whom every external influence gives a new impulse, and who turns a willing ear to flattery, because incapable of estimating the motive of the flatterer.

"Beethoven," says

he, "well knew and always respected the motto, Palmam qui meruit ferat. His upright, impartial mind led him to bestow the most unequivocal approbation on foreign talent. He always bore in mind that a Mozart had preceded him, and that another might follow him. He ever cherished high expectations of the future, for he fervently believed in the omnipotence of the Creator, and the inexhaustibility of Nature." And then breaking out into the superlative of eulogy, he says: "Oh! how great was Beethoven as a man!

reconcile a high degree of refinement and culture when attained, with permanence on the one hand and general diffusion on the other. Hitherto, when nations have reached a certain point of social progress, there has always been a tendency to general corruption and dissolution. The progress has been partial and one-sided, pampering here, stinting there. Its very elements have contained in them the germs of decay. Italy and Spain admonish us, that even the Christian civilization of Europe promises to be no exception to the sad rule. We are to try the experiment under new auspices. And, though we have little occasion for pride and vanity, we have many reasons for gladness and thanksgiving. Indeed, what ground has any nation for boasting? To all the apostolic rebuke is applicable, "What hast thou which thou didst not receive?" In giving us extraordinary advantages, Divine Providence has laid us under extraordinary responsibilities. These are what we should learn to feel. We not only have duties to ourselves and our posterity to discharge, but we are entrusted with a mission for the whole race; its destinies, to a fearful extent, are placed in our hands. A lofty ideal a glorious goal is set before us. Let us not be high-minded, but run with modesty and circumspection, as well as with vigor and alacrity, lest we fail as others less favored have failed before us.

Some of our advantages are-general freedom and freshness, an open field, a youthful spirit and susceptible character; courage, confidence and hope; a general diffusion of knowledge and culture, and of the means of external comfort; a heroic age in our early settlement and happy revolution; above all, in erecting our fabric of society, we have no antiquated edifices to remodel, no crumbling walls to prop up, no rubbish to remove; but an abundance of new and sound materials all around us.

Dr. Arnold, writing of English conservatism, and of the obstacles to improvement in the existing corrupt and unnatural state of English society, says, that "a volume might be written on those words of Harrington, we are living in the dregs of the Gothic Empire. It is that the beginnings of things are bad, and

when they have not been altered, you may safely say they want altering. But then comes the question whether our fate is not fixed, and whether you could not as well make the muscles and sinews of a full grown man perform the feats of an Indian juggler." It is sometimes represented, by various arguments and figures of speech, that those antiquated institutions which have come down from a semi-barbarous age, are useful, and even needful to sustain the new and better institutions in their feeble beginnings and during their slow and gradual growth. This might be true, if they contained in them the germs, or even the recognition, of a higher development; if they left free scope to the spirit of progress. But such is far from being the case. They are notoriously the greatest obstacles and the most inveterate enemies of all change for the better. Where was it ever known that they encouraged such a change? Has not the spirit of conservatism which possesses them always and everywhere made an uncompromising warfare against every innovation and improvement? a spirit which, like the venomous reptile, still makes them its abode after they have crumbled to ruins that fill the air with pestilence and death.

All the natural elements of society and of humanity, evil as well as good, are among us in a state of commixture, commotion and contest. This is, indeed, a critical situation; but herein lies no occasion for dismay or discouragement. Great risk is often the condition of great success. Nature loves variety, and hates monotony. As Guizot has well said: this is the picture of the universe, of humanity itself. Yet nature does not amuse herself with placing in mere juxtaposition, or patching together the members and relics of the part after the life has departed from them-as the Europeans, and especially the English, have attempted, and are attempting, to do. But she developes her variety, calls forth the struggle, from the living elements of the present, as among us. Our civilization is, in this respect, more consonant with the course of nature than even the European, which, it must be admitted, exhibits a variety of form and movement unknown in ancient times.

entertainment, where pleasure to guests and host would be certain. What a purely terrestrial pleasure it would be to open a fine house for the entertainment of poor widows and orphans. How little danger there would be of offending anybody's taste on such an occasion, and one would feel sure of being well spoken of by one's guests! Everybody must remember Charles Lamb's eccentric friend, who used to give an annual dinner of fried sausages to the London chimney sweeps, and the delightful account which Elia gave of an entertainment of the kind, which he had the good fortune to enjoy. I remember that I wondered when I first read it that such feasts were not given daily instead of yearly, there seemed to be such delight in them. The Lord Mayor's dinner in Guildhall, and Mr. Rogers' breakfasts, are poor things in comparison with the chimney sweeps' dinner.

In the queer old town in which I was born, where fish formed the staple food of the people, it used to be the custom, and may be so still, for the wealthy families who kept a cow, to give what they called a veal feast, annually, at which all the near relations of the family were invited, from the great-grandparents down to the great-grandchildren-not the slightest distinction being made in respect of worldly circumstances. On these occasions a whole calf was usually cooked and served up in a variety of ways, in capacious pewter dishes, which shone brighter than many services of silver which I have seen. There was always a prodigal display of finery at these feasts, but it was not such finery as they purchase at fancy stores, for nothing could be plainer than the dresses which were worn, drab being the pervading color; but there were fine eyes, fine teeth, fine forms, fine complexions, and above all fine countenances, in which you could find no resemblance to either servility or pride. The grandfathers, uncles, and fathers-in-law wore drab breeches, and fine fleecy hosiery, which clung to the comfortable-looking legs which they enclosed as though they loved them, and took pride in displaying their wonderfully fine proportions; the grandmothers, aunts, and mothers-in-law wore rich brown silks, which rustled tremendously when their wearers moved, with shirt-sleeves that left bare for anybody's admiration, (and who would not admire them) arms, which it would have been sinful to cover up. The young people were similarly dressed, but somewhat tempered by worldly fashion, of

course. The drink at these feasts was good old cider, for the farmers had not begun to destroy their apple-orchards to promote the cause of temperance. Dinner was put upon the table exactly at twelve, and after they had feasted, servants and all-for the servants were probably cousins--the remains of the feast were nicely dished up and sent to the sick and the poor of their acquaintance. A feast like this might be kept in Lent, without endangering one's chance of reaching heaven; at least, I think so; but I may be wrong. Here then was pleasure in entertaining company, and the pleasure was mutual; but the pleasure of receiving company, generally, means the misery of giving misery to others.

Some people talk of the pleasure of doing good, as though they believed there was any pleasure in it. Why not do good always, and so keep up a round of pleasure, if they like it? There are pious people who give ten dollars to the poor, and a hundred for a breast-pin which affords them the greatest pleasure? They give a thousand dollars for a conspicuous pew in church, and sixpence at a charity sermon! It is a great mistake to suppose that the world has any admiration for goodness. They may admire it for its rarity, as they do a green lizard, or a lady with pink eyes, but they have no more wish to resemble it themselves than they have to resemble a lizard or an Albiness. It is a common observation among politicians, that Mr. So-and-so is too good a man to be popular; and yet these people are as proud as peacocks when their political friends compliment them by the tender of a nomination for office, although it is a tacit acknowledgment that they are considered wicked or weak enough to be popular. Virtue does not lie level with the public eye, and it is easier to look down than up. A man would attract more notice in a gutter than on the roof of a house. If you would be seen by the crowd, you must get above their heads. The world takes no pleasure in the reward of goodness. If virtue is to be a test of merit, they say, what will become of us? It is expecting too much to ask the world to take pleasure in its own condemnation. Was not Christ crucified, and Barabbas liberated?

It was the fashion a few years ago with poets, to write long poems with a single pleasure for a theme: as the Pleasures of Hope, Memory, and so forth; Dr. McHenry, we believe, closed the catalogue with the Pleasures of Friendship.

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